Faust
by Sekah
Summary: What if Toguro discovered Kurama's identity before Hiei did? And what if for his desperate bid to save his mother, Kurama needed something Sakyo could give, and learned of it before Hiei begged his expertise and he remembered the powers of the Forlorn Hope? Suffice to say, Kurama's life might have been very different. Canon-compliant AU. Pairings: Toguro/Karasu, Karasu/Kurama.
1. Heap of Dying Ash

**Author's Note: **Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar but one dissatisfied with his life who therefore makes a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.

* * *

"I asked a question," Kurama husked, straightening a wrinkle from his festival yukata. The only difficulty in this fight had been making sure his clothes and hair stayed pristine. "Will you answer it?"

"There are others who know you're the Youko Kurama, but let me go and I'll, I'll lead you straight to them! Please, won't you let me_ go?"_

Kurama gave him a schoolboy's smile. "I can smell when you're lying, demon. You're lucky I can't be away from mother long."

He watched the death plant rip through blue skin with disinterest. Cupping his hand before him, he blew hard until the spores of flesh-eating mushrooms he'd collected spread over the tangled heap of limbs he'd hidden behind a dumpster in this blind alley. The mushrooms would rot the bodies to nothing, leaving no trace in a matter of hours. He timed them to die after one night.

Phosphorescence glowed from the swelling bells of mushrooms. He theorized a less obtrusive light, and fed the new make-up to the fungi, pleased when they dimmed. Then he withered the death plant's bright, luminous flowers. Finally, he walked over and dragged cardboard over the whole mess.

Scraping his short-cropped hair from his face, he sighed. His shoulders unknotted, tension loosening. The fact of being found had terrified him more than the reality of these cretins deserved. He'd had to move some distance to find a place he could finish this gang off that was isolated from the streets full of drunken college couples and children dragging their parents on to the next shaved ice cart, done up in kimono and pikachu masks. The cherry blossom festival only needed to be suffered once a year.

"Neat work."

Kurama spun on the ball of his foot and leapt back, skidding over a shattered bottle that screeched against the concrete, his hands automatically forming a handful of defensive petals, a grass blade scything from his arm.

A nasally voice cackled. "Look at this pretty thing. He knows how to play, brother! Would you like to play with us, boy?"

Their forms detached from shadows that shouldn't have hidden them, and Kurama's heart began to beat in his chest. The small lump on his brother's broad shoulder let out another high-pitched giggle. Kurama had no doubt he'd heard his heart thump faster, could smell the adrenaline in his sweat.

He recognized them. "The Toguro Brothers." He'd heard the stories, and standing before their colossal strength at a fraction of his own, he had one gamble. Green eyes narrowed. "I have no quarrel with you. I want no fight."

"I don't fight children," the mountain Kurama assumed to be the younger brother said. He stood solid and immovable as a boulder before wind.

Kurama began to edge to the wall on the side opposite from where he'd excused himself from Shiori, leaving her picnicking in the park with coworkers and family, hoping to lead them away from her.

"I do," snickered the elder brother.

"I want no quarrel," Kurama repeated. Then gasped.

It was faint, but from the way the younger's broad face cocked, and the renewed laughter from the elder brother, they heard it too.

"Shuuichi," Shiori called, far out on the road that led onto the street and branched into this alley. "Shuuichi!"

Kurama shifted. He couldn't fight them—he wouldn't win. He couldn't stay here—she couldn't see this. He couldn't run—they might hurt her.

The younger Toguro, watching him closely behind a pair of designer sunglasses, said, "Come back here tonight at four, Youko Kurama. We have things to discuss."

Kurama squared his chin, nodded sharply, and fled the alley, brushing past them to do it, his grass sword disappearing into his sleeve.

He caught up to her in the crowd on the main road. "Shuuichi," Shiori chided, "where did you run off to? The cherry blossoms don't look the same without you. We have cake!"

"Of course, Mother. Let's not linger!"

As he pulled his mother away by the wrist, he heard the laugh chasing him down the street, and moved all the faster for it.

* * *

Kurama found the alley again from above. He'd travelled over rooftops soundless as any bandit.

They were stationary among the littered leaves and the shards of broken glass, barely defined in dawn's grey light.

The Younger Toguro was watching him.

Kurama leapt five stories, and landed in a smooth crouch. He stood, brushing his bangs from his eyes. Younger smiled.

"How old are you, boy?"

"The body or the soul," Kurama asked.

"Body," Elder chimed in.

Kurama drew up straight. "I am eleven years old."

"And soul?" Younger inquired.

"Youko is more than 2,000 years old."

The Younger Toguro seemed intrigued. "Are you different?"

Kurama said nothing.

The Elder swung from his brother's back like a monkey and hunched forward, footsteps crunching in the glass. He leaned in close to Kurama's stony face, trying to get him to flinch. Giggling to himself, he hawked for a moment and spat on Kurama's cheek, still invasively close.

"Brother," Younger rumbled warningly. Kurama didn't move beyond using one hand to wipe spittle from his cheek. His cautious face stayed blank.

"You said you had something to discuss," Kurama reminded. His throat hurt from the tenseness of his muscles.

Toguro bared his teeth in a grin. "Indeed I do. What do you know of the Apparition Gang?"

Kurama closed his eyes, adrenaline soaking his heart. "A for-hire gang of mercenaries who operate in the ningenkai's underworld." His eyes flicked open and he looked up, far up, into sunglasses. "Run by you, if the rumors speak true."

"We want you to join," Elder Toguro said, craning his neck to speak directly in his ear. He cackled at Kurama's flinch. Dawn condensation that was making the cardboard behind the dumpster sag into mush made Kurama's skin clammy—or perhaps that was sweat.

Elder dipped his nose into Kurama's hair and inhaled. Kurama leapt back, arms up in a competent block, but the panic shaking him like vertigo was for nothing: Elder was ripped back abruptly, squawking.

"If I have a choice," Kurama said, eyes flickering from one brother to the other, arms still up in a block, "I refuse."

"You're young yet," Toguro remarked, his brother forcefully re-perched on his shoulder. "I won't force you to come with us."

_"But brother!"_

"Quiet." The sun began to rise, piercing the alleyway's gloom. For a moment Kurama was blinded. "For now, you're too young and weak to be of use, but I can see that that'll change. If I see you again, I warn you: you won't have the option of no."

Kurama nodded. Younger stepped back from blocking the sole entrance or exit to the alleyway, and gestured Kurama through.

Kurama walked, every muscle hard against attack. The moment he was far enough for pride to be assuaged, he ran.


	2. The Sale of a Soul

Before his mother collapsed at work, years later, Kurama still believed that nothing would induce him to seek out the brothers willingly.

Kurama still believed he was safe.

* * *

The automatic door hissed as he walked through into the gilded lobby of this Tokyo skyscraper.

The receptionist team, all attractive girls in professional attire, watched him curiously. He'd had to steal the suit, a necessary precaution. Presentation was important after all. He assumed that teenagers were rare in these halls, at least in the lobby: and he himself was struck by how young he looked when he first put the foreign clothing on, like a child playing pretend.

The fact of his human body's youth he couldn't hide, but he knew he could mask its effects, and so he'd set about doing that.

Walking up to the receptionists' desk, feeling exposed in the glass and steel facing of the atrium, he bowed with a charming smile and said quietly, "My name is Shuuichi Minamino. I'd like an audience with Mr. Sakyo."

"Do you have an appointment, sir?" a girl asked with a bright lipsticked smile.

"I don't," Kurama replied honestly.

"I'm afraid to say Mr. Sakyo doesn't receive unsolicited visitors—if you'll excuse me for a second," she finished in a rush. A tasteful phone situated in the center of the desk had begun to ring, and all the receptionists quieted.

She picked up the phone, "Hello," she said breathlessly. "Yes, of course sir." She listened and Kurama realized he couldn't hear the other end. Demonic energy was layered over that particular phone, a charm to blunt noise. "I'll send him up right away. Oh, of course. I'll let him know immediately. Thank you, sir."

She put down the phone with a click, white-faced, staring at Kurama with new-found respect.

"Mr. Sakyo has agreed to meet with you. If you'll wait on one of those lounge chairs by the door, someone from security will be here momentarily to take you up to him."

Kurama bowed, the receptionist bowed, and Kurama, aware he was being watched and likely had been all the way up the street, walked to the chairs and chose one that had a marginally more defensible view than the others. He kept his back to the glass fronting. The danger was inside, not out.

The waxy tan leaves of the potted peperomia plant next to his chair glittered as he put some power into them, chasing the rot from their roots.

"Mr. Minamino," a woman's voice said. Demon, his mind immediately supplied. He turned his gaze up casually, seeing she'd placed a human form over her own. Her true form had blue hair and red eyes, a single horn jutting from between long bangs. "If you'll come this way."

* * *

They were riding a private elevator up to the top of the building. The demon beside him had said nothing the entire trip, taking him silently through layers of security you'd never guess the existence of out in the open glass lobby.

Sakyo's office was a penthouse suite, top floor.

Kurama betrayed no fear when the elevator dinged. The velvet lined door opened.

The demoness bowed him in.

"Very good, Miyuki," a voice said as he stepped out, painfully familiar though he'd only heard it twice, three years ago in an alley.

"Do you require anything more, Lord Toguro?"

Kurama turned and looked straight into those damned sunglasses, ignoring the grimly amused expression on the demon's face.

"That will be all."

Her clothes rustled as she bowed, and then he heard her step back into the elevator. It closed with another ding. Kurama tore his gaze away from Toguro's silent examination and looked over the neatly appointed room.

It was dark in a svelte, stylish way. It was curious to see such human luxury. Kurama was used to the more antiquated demonic forms of excess.

A telephone rang from another room. There was a click, and then a man's voice with a smooth smoker's rasp sounded.

"Yes. Yes. Do you think I care? I said the meeting was cancelled and I meant it." A pause. "It damn well better. I don't want you to call this line again until you have something important to say, you understand?"

The rude stranger hung up the phone, and then footsteps echoed before he walked into the room. _Good balance,_ Kurama noted.

Long black hair fell around his shoulders in a careful way. He was handsome, undeniably so, with a scar tracing his cheek, from a knife or a demon's claw Kurama couldn't be sure. He was looking down as he walked in, dipping the end of a new cigarette into the orange flame protruding from a lighter.

The gold lighter was swung shut and the man groped to place it in an inside pocket. He turned his eyes up, showing them to be startlingly blue, and walked up to Kurama.

"Who is this?" he asked, looking Kurama over.

"Youko Kurama, alias Shuuichi Minamino," Toguro replied. "Demonically possessed. He has the highest test scores in Japan. The Russian Military has plagiarized a number of his research papers. You should be about fourteen now, eh, boy?"

"I am," Kurama said, adding coolly, "and this is a merger, not a possession."

Sakyo, for surely this must be him, looked down at him, then smiled. He took a drag on his cigarette. "Toguro, if you'd order us some drinks," he said, the smoke deformed by the movements of his mouth. "Come with me," he told Kurama, and turned and walked back towards the other rooms.

Kurama followed, eyes blank.

* * *

"So, why have you come here today?"

Situated comfortably in an armchair, a finger of brandy sitting within easy reach, Kurama cleared his throat in a vain attempt to rid it of the acrid taste of tobacco. He kept his head turned slightly to see Younger Toguro, who leaned against a bookshelf behind him.

"I require something you have," he said.

"Oh?"

"I have been told that you have in your possession an origin mirror."

Sakyo sipped his own brandy. "I do."

"I require its use."

Toguro spoke up, obviously confused. "That mirror is only good for divination, boy."

"It's most commonly used for divination, but if it is truly an origin mirror, it is imbued with the power of a God. There are many more uses for such a thing than simple fortune-telling."

"Like healing?" Toguro guessed bluntly.

Kurama turned sharply to look at him.

Toguro smiled menacingly. "I've kept my tabs on you, Youko Kurama. Your mother is in the hospital as we speak, is she not?"

Kurama closed his eyes, and then opened them again, examining Toguro narrowly. "She is." He saw no recourse for it but to plead, distasteful as that was. "Allow me to use the mirror to save the woman's life."

"And you'll, what?" Sakyo added, sounding intrigued. "What are your terms?"

"That's in your hands," Kurama said. "You know what I want; tell me what you consider fair recompense. I don't know what it is men like you are looking for," he added, though he knew perfectly well.

"Does he have anything I could use?" Sakyo asked Toguro. Then his lips twitched. "Besides the obvious, that is."

"He's a skilled and cunning fighter and a master thief, according to the rumors of his previous life." He smiled nastily at the boy. "I'll have to fight him to make sure, but I think we can find good use for him." Kurama bowed to him, feeling cold.

"Very good," Sakyo said, cigarette dangled from between two fingers, taking another sip of his brandy. "I'll have to draw a contract up."

"Boy," Toguro said. "You realize you can't live dualistically in my employ." Kurama watched him. "I won't allow you to have contact with the woman after you come to work for me. Your ties will have to be severed."

Kurama bowed again. "I know. I knew from the start."

Sakyo called someone on intercom and Kurama was led away, glad that selling his soul had been so quick, and nearly painless.


End file.
